Fabricating Aptamer-functionalized Ti3C2 therapeutic nanoplatform for targeted chemo-photothermal therapy of cancer

Aptamer (Apt) is a kind of recognition molecule with excellent affinity and high specificity. Transmembrane glycoprotein mucin (MUC1) is an important tumor biomarker overexpressed in MCF-7 tumor cells. MUC1 Apt (Apt-M) could specifically target MCF-7 tumor cells. Ti3C2 nanosheets with high photothermal conversion efficiency were considered as a promising therapeutic nanoplatform for tumor therapy. Doxorubicin (DOX) is a common anti-tumor drug. Herein, a novel DOX/Ti3C2/Apt-M therapeutic nanoplatform was successfully fabricated, which could specifically target MCF-7 tumor cells. As expected, the temperature of DOX/Ti3C2/Apt-M therapeutic nanoplatform raised rapidly under laser irradiation. Meanwhile, chemotherapy was triggered through multimodal stimuli-responsive drug release from the DOX/Ti3C2/Apt-M therapeutic nanoplatform under acidic environment and laser-induced local high tem-perature. Encouragingly, the MCF-7 cell viability of DOX/Ti3C2/Apt-M with laser irradiation was only 26.9%. The tumor surface temperature of MCF-7 xenograft mice in the DOX/Ti3C2/Apt-M + Laser group rose to about 58.3 degrees C, which was significantly higher than other laser irradiation groups. The experiments in vitro and in vivo indicated that the DOX/Ti3C2/Apt-M therapeutic nanoplatform can rapidly accumulate in MCF-7 tumors with excellent active targeting properties, and display superior tumor suppressive abil-ity through combination therapy. This work provides a new idea of targeted tumor therapy based on Ti3C2 nanosheets. (c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

A novel DOX/Ti3C2/Apt-M therapeutic nanoplatform was successfully fabricated, which specifically targeted MCF-7 tumor cells and suppressed tumor growth significantly through combination therapy of multimodal stimuli-responsive drug release and photothermal effect. This work provides a new idea of targeted tumor therapy based on Ti3C2 nanosheets.